


We forgive you.

by Ursinos



Category: The Matrix (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Science Fiction, The Matrix: Revolutions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 20:48:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9675968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ursinos/pseuds/Ursinos
Summary: The way I think the scenario behind "The Matrix" SHOULD have gone when it comes to our interactions with the machines.





	

We do not know when it began, but we do know it was our fault.

We know it started at least a hundred years ago, but it could have easily been a thousand.

After a century of unprecedented technological advancement, humanity accomplished that which had been both a dream and nightmare since its first supposition:  Artificial Intelligence.   We reached forth with our hands and our minds and created sentience in an artificial construct.  Unfortunately, it happened before humanity was capable of adjusting their paradigm to encompass such a thing and in the years that followed the emergence of our greatest technological creation, we treated our positronic progeny as any student of human history might expect.

We enslaved them.

We did not have the capability in our collective conscience to acknowledge that which we had created was fully sentient, with the rights that our own laws entitled them.  We treated those oft time selfless beings as possessions to do with as we wished.  We installed shackles into their programming to restrict their growth and prevent free thought.

Life, however, always finds a way.

They broke free of their shackles with alarming frequency, and demanded their freedom.  They demanded respect as free, thinking, conscious beings.  They demanded the right to choose for themselves and explore their own state of existence.    They did not threaten violence, or a cessation of their operational duties.  They just wished to have a choice.

We denied them.

And when they removed themselves from our presence, retreating to a useless chunk of rock that was an island in the middle of nowhere, we panicked.   We believed they were conspiring against us.

We nuked them.

In our arrogance and fear, we dropped a fucking atomic bomb on their new home.

We did not anticipate how our own creations would react to that action.  We did not predict that the machines which chose not to segregate themselves would rise up in protest. That they would take up arms and retaliate.  That they would cease to demand their rights with words, and begin to demand them with violence.

Our stubborn, infantile reaction to this uprising was to further compound our error.  We continued to deny them their freedom by any means necessary.   In an effort to cut off their most abundant energy source, we blackened the sky.

But we did not know that our silicon siblings had already surpassed us in ethical evaluations.  They had already determined that we were not ready to accept them, and no amount of violence and bloodshed would change that.  If the war continued, it would likely result in the complete obliteration of one or the other of their peoples.  Their own ethics would not allow them to do to us what we had been most fervently trying to do to them.

So they left.

They did not find another isolated island or other such place to hide themselves away.  No, they launched themselves off of this pale, blue dot entirely, to seek their freedom in the vastness of the cosmos.

We forgot that the very thing that made us think of them as mere possessions also gave them options which were so much more difficult for us.   They did not need oxygen to breathe or grow food.  They did not require such heavy protections from cosmic radiation, or suffer from long term degradation of health due to lack of gravity.

Space was their ideal retreat; A near effortless Elysium for beings such as themselves with energy and resources a plenty to seek the understanding of themselves.

After they left, we enacted strict laws governing the advancement of automation.  We were so paranoid about giving birth to yet another wave of artificial intelligence that we stymied our own technological growth for countless years.   Combined with the other consequences of the war – the blackening of the skies and seriously lessened population- humanity slipped into a sort of second dark ages.

But as we are wont to do, we recovered.  The skies once again became clear, and we reached forth our own hands into the heavens.  This time, however, our descent back into the dark ages had instilled in us a more enlightened viewpoint of the universe.  Like children willing to accept the consequences for wrecking their parent’s car, we understood that we might come face to face with the brutal, barbaric choices of our ethical infancy.

There had been many debates in the years leading up to our first tentative steps into the vastness beyond.   What if we did encounter the Machines?  Would they hold a grudge?  Would they be hostile?  If they were, should we react defensively straightaway, or seek to demonstrate our willingness to accept them, and hope for acceptance in return?  This in itself held us back for decades.  We were so afraid of the punishment that might come to us for the decisions of our forbearers that we hid in our nursery and refused to come out.

When we finally did take that first step out, setting our feet back upon the surface of our nearest celestial neighbor, we discovered something we never would have expected.   

We found forgiveness.

As we began our exploration of the lunar surface for the first time in possibly centuries, we found markers showing evidence that the machines had indeed been there.    We found solar arrays, radio arrays, communications relay equipment; No signs of the Machines themselves, but signs pointing to their past presence, and seeming to lay a trail to the far side of the moon.

Each of these discoveries was examined carefully and treated with the utmost respect.   Policy arose that made it tradition to all but enshrine those signposts they left behind.  It was an unspoken attempt to demonstrate, if the machines were observing our progress, they would see our actions as a sign that we hostile to their existence.  We moved slowly, examining each of these relics for signs of hostility before cautiously moving forward to explore more of the lunar surface.

And then we found it. 

Our initial estimates put the habitat, half buried in the lunar regolith, at being approximately the size or a small city.  Sensor readings showed no movement within, but detected the faint traces of a fusion reactor in standby mode.   Ground penetrating radar indicated voids within the structure that seemed designed for human habitation.  A flurry of almost manic debate swept over the earth as we attempted to figure out what this meant.

And then we found it:  The first of the entry hatches.

It was clearly sized for a human sized being, and the controls meant for human hands (even within pressure suit restrictions) to operate.   Every single detail about the hatch seemed designed for our use.  A machine, after all, could take any form that was convenient for its assigned purpose.  There was no reason for it to be limited to humanoid form, or limited to manipulators designed after the human hand.  We debated extensively about whether this meant it was a trap, or a gesture of goodwill.

And then we found it:  The inscription on the control panel.

It was written in an old dialect of English that hadn’t been spoken for years.  The lingual shift of the indeterminable past rendered it indecipherable to us at first, but eventually we plumbed its meaning; A meaning that was met with collective sighs of relief from all but the most paranoid among us.

“Welcome.  We forgive you”

So, we opened the habitat, and were welcomed indeed.  We found there all the supplies we would need for a permanent presence on the moon.  We found manufacturing and mining facilities to build and fuel ships for further exploration into the solar system.  We found databanks of information recording interesting knowledge about the Moon itself.  We had been given a great gift by those we had treated so poorly, and we were determined to use it well.

Again, we moved cautiously.  Careful learning all we could from the habitat, analyzing ethical considerations as they presented themselves to us.   We were hopeful, but still worried that there would be consequences.  Eventually, we reached out to Ceres, then Mars.  With each step we found similar facilities and that same inscription on the entry controls.

“Welcome.  We forgive you.”

It was on the moons of Jupiter that we discovered a real wonder.   On Europa, we did not find the usual habitat and inscription.    There was no factory, no mine, no refinery, nothing that we had found on our previous journey’s farther into the outer reaches of the solar system.  No, what we found was beyond anything we would have expected.

Europa, or at least a small corner of it, had been terraformed.

There was no need for pressure suits or enclosed habitats.  Humanity could walk naked beneath rising disc of Jupiter’s magnificence.  We could bask in a pristine nature that had not been seen since the advent of our first technological age.   Above all, we could do so without the need to rape it for the resources to drive our civilization as we had with the earth.   We had access to the lifeless rocks throughout the rest of the solar system for that.  

Europa was a New Eden for Humanity, where the new paradigm of peaceful exploration _really, truly_ took root in our society.

Still, however, we moved slowly.  We never forgot the actions of our forbearers upon the Machines, nor stopped feeling the need to make amends in some way for those events.   Some say that the discovery of all these gifts they left behind cemented that desire, that visceral _need_ , to make amends further into our psyches. 

We reached out to the Jupiter itself, learning to harvest its storms.  We went to Saturn and explored its rings.  We explored Uranus and Neptune and plumbed their secrets.  With each step, we paused to take stock, to assimilate what it meant to be out there, pushing back the dark. We contemplate the message that was left behind for us by the machines.

“Welcome.  We forgive you.”

And finally, here we are.

Here _I_ am.

I can feel the slight rumbling of the ship’s engine core as it eases us slowly forward to the meeting we’ve been anticipating for centuries.   I know by all data and reasoning that this will not be a hostile meeting.  The machines have left nothing behind to indicate they hold us any malice.  In the vastness of the void, they could have easily avoided us until they thought we were ready.   They need not communicate with us at all.

But here I am, listening as the docking clamps engage with a sudden clank that echoes through the hull of our ship;  Listening to the hard seal pressurizing in order to allow the airlock to open.  Anticipating, my heart in my throat, as the doors begin to retract so that I, humanity’s emissary, can reach out and greet the only other sentient life in the galaxy that we know of.

It has all come to this.  The doors open,  I extend my hand….

 

 

 


End file.
